Lewis H. Morgan

Lewis Henry Morgan ( born November 21, 1818 in Aurora, New York, † December 17, 1881 ) was an American anthropologist and co-founder of ethnology. He represented an evolutionary oriented anthropology.

Life

1840 Morgan concluded his studies at Union College in Schenectady, New York, and went back to Aurora, where he enrolled for the law. He studied the Greek and Roman classics.

Awareness Morgan reached through his field work among the Iroquois peoples. Strongly affected by the injustice with which the indigenous peoples were treated by the American government, Morgan helped the Seneca legally in their fight against the Ogden Land Company. He was adopted by the Seneca as one of their own. They gave him the name " Tayadaowuhkuh " - " one of the builds bridges " ( between Indians and whites).

Morgan's evolutionism

Morgan took the theory a monotonically ascending development of human culture. Accordingly, all cultures go through three stages of development: from the stage of " wildness " in primitive communism on the stage of barbarism to the highest level of civilization. After Morgan's theory, all peoples have to go through this development.

• Wildness: The lowest cultural level of development knows no livestock and no food preservatives, but only basic diet by wild plants and hunting.
• Barbarism: Agriculture and livestock
• Civilization: The stage of civilization is characterized by the development of writing, ie the historiography. This past and future can be connected and a further development is possible.

In addition, Morgan took the idea that at the beginning of human development of all nations matrifokal (see also matrilineal and matrilocal ) had lived and the development can be equated with the Patriarchate with the achievement of civilization. His theory, a matrifocal culture stage was associated with collective ownership. When private property took shape more and more developed in parallel patriarchal social structures. The unbridled growth of private property, he saw a danger to civilization: " the growth of wealth since the advent of civilization has become so vast ... that this wealth is to the people become an unmanageable power The human mind stands bewildered. because of its own creation .... the mere pursuit of wealth is not the final destiny of mankind, .... The dissolution of the company is menacingly in front of us to complete a historical career, is the sole end goal of wealth, because such a career contains the elements of their own destruction. ".

Friedrich Engels took over this theory of Morgan and refined it.

Ancient Society ( The primitive society )

In the lines of human progress from savagery through barbarism to civilization ( " The primitive society or study of human progress from savagery through barbarism to civilization " ), published in 1877 ( German 1891) founded Researches: Morgan's major work, Ancient Society, Or its cultural evolutionism, as he was represented by Herbert Spencer, Edward B. Tylor and Friedrich Engels. The theory is based on a comparison between companies of different stages of development. Here Morgan differentiates particularly between a personal relationship based on " Societas " and based on ownership and region, " Civitas ," which he delivered a historical theory template for Ferdinand Tönnies ' distinction between community and society.

From today's point of view and according to the current state of research, this approach of monotonically increasing cultures is insufficient to explain the development of cultures. This view is, however, often wrongly criticized as a linear conception of history. What is meant here is mostly a critique in terms of monotonically increasing character that had the course of history. It is regarded as Eurocentric and includes a score that represents the western civilized world to the forefront of development and simultaneously classifies other cultures as underdeveloped and primitive.

Honors

Morgan was inducted into the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. These are the two highest honors that can get in American science an anthropologist.